When the bell rang, the class quieted down and the new teacher moved to half-sit against the front of his desk. “Right, I’m Mr. Lund and you’re in Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition. If that’s not the class it says on your schedule, you’re in the wrong place.”
It was then, seeing him face-to-face, that I realized we’d already met. He glanced at me, but his attention kept moving around the class. He didn’t make a big deal about his name or introductions like some teachers did and he didn’t seem to care about the whispers that still lingered at the edges of the room.
“I’m sending some papers around. Mark your name on the attendance sheet and take a copy of the syllabus and read through it. This is what we’ll cover for the first semester, but you’ll need to sign up for the spring semester as well in order to take the test for college credit. Everyone clear? Questions?”
When no one spoke up he kept going, and a hint of a grin tugged the corner of his mouth up. “This is by far the best class they gave me this year. You’re all seniors on a college track so you’re smarter than the average bear. We don’t have to beat our heads against the five-paragraph essay or any of the standardized testing crap in here. We’ve got some room to play and do some actual learning. I’m going to expect you to do your own thinking, speak up about your opinions, and be prepared to debate and either defend or relinquish those opinions as our discussions demand. If you’re quiet, I’m going to have trouble passing you. Speak up. I’m not Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, all right? I’m not going to draw you out of your little self-conscious shells and show you that you’re a closet poet.”
Most of the room started snickering.
“And on that subject, we won’t be writing poetry in here. No poems allowed. I can’t stomach them. Don’t write a poem in response to one of our texts and expect me to pass you. This is about reading and critically thinking about what you’ve read and how the text has changed you. Every book changes you in some way, whether it’s your perspective on the world or how you define yourself in relation to the world. Literature gives us identity, even terrible literature. Moby-Dick, for example, defined how I feel about rope. I don’t know how anyone can write pages and pages of thinly veiled rope metaphors. If there are any Melville fans in the room, I might have trouble passing you.”
More laughter and this time I couldn’t help joining in. He pushed away from the desk and collected the attendance sheet.
“I expect this class is going to be the highlight of my day. Don’t let me down.”
As he started going through the syllabus I felt something good happening deep in my stomach, the same kind of feeling I got when the casting call for Jane Eyre was posted for the Rochester Civic Theater a few weeks ago and I knew I was going to get the lead role. Mr. Lund was smart, funny, and urban. He looked as wrong in the cement brick building of Pine Valley High School as I had felt for the last three years. And even though it seemed like he must be a mirage or some product of my bored-to-death-by–Pine Valley imagination, I could feel the heat coming off him from my seat in the front row. I could smell the soapy spice of his deodorant. He was real and he was talking to us like we were actual people, which was a teaching strategy no one had ever tried in this building before. The feeling in my stomach grew throughout the whole period and when the bell rang, I gathered my books with a huge smile on my face.
I was walking out with Maggie and Portia when Mr. Lund stopped me.
“Hattie the cashier.” He smiled as he erased his notes on the board.
“Peter the customer.”
“Let’s go with Mr. Lund, all right?”
“All right.” I gave him a little wave and left for lunch.
Maybe it was Mr. Lund’s attitude or just the promise of some actual literary discussions, but whatever the reason, I forgot about being excited for the end of the year. Now I was excited for what the year might bring.
I worked the photo counter at CVS. It was way easier than working on the farm and they actually paid me here. All I had to do was develop pictures and run the cash register and sometimes I helped the old ladies pick out greeting cards for their grandkids. They always wanted to get the 99-cent ones with generic teddy bears on them. I thought they were being cheap until one of the pharmacy techs told me how much they spent on their meds every month. Jesus, remind me not to get old. I must keep in good health, and not die.
The store was pretty quiet when I punched in after school. Usually the rush came when the first shift at the plant finished and then again after five when the Rochester commuters got back into town. I pulled a blue smock over my New York outfit and started downloading picture files from the website and sending them to the printer. They were mostly kids’ birthdays and holidays, sometimes a wedding or a vacation to Branson. Once there were two hundred pictures from Hawaii and another time someone had gone to Paris. I must have stared at the Paris pictures for hours, seeing myself sitting in those little cafés and strolling over the bridges, meeting a fashion photographer and going backstage at a runway show. I had the whole trip completely imagined, but when the lady came in to pick them up, she said it was just a layover on a business trip. My version was so much better.
It was always women who got pictures. Ninety-nine percent of the time when a guy came to the counter, they were picking up for someone else, like Mr. Lund did last week. The scrapbook ladies developed the most and they always told me what kind of album they were working on and showed me a picture or two, like I hadn’t already peeked at all of them.